


Impedance

by SaltCore



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hanzo's danger fetish, M/M, poorly timed making out, some dragon bullshit, worried Jesse McCree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 06:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17699522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: Sometimes Jesse feels like nothing but a lightning rod.





	Impedance

The unmistakable pop of gunfire echoes through the street. Jesse stops cold, his stomach sinking with the realization that this op has started to slip sideways. The shooting wasn’t supposed to start until he and Hanzo were in position.

“Status?” he barks, knowing already that _fucked_ will be the basic shape of the answer.

“We’re pinned down!” Lena calls back. Even with the distortion from the comm, Jesse hears the undercurrent of contained fear in her voice. He pushes down his own building dread and starts trying to balance a deceptively simple equation: if he has five squad mates and a narrow window before the authorities arrive, how does he minimize the damage against superior numbers? With only himself and Hanzo not engaged with what must be a full Talon section, the math keeps coming up bad.

“A moment,” Hanzo says mildly. Jesse’s head snaps up to where Hanzo was supposed to have made his perch, but he’s already gone. “Be ready to break cover on my mark.”

Hanzo sounds damn near chipper, which means he’s got some plan in his head that he thinks will work, but in all actuality is terminally insane. All Jesse’s calculation grinds to a halt, and he hails Hanzo on their private channel.

“What are you _doin_ ’?” he hisses.

“Providing a distraction.”

“Wait for me!”

“No time.”

The line goes dead, Hanzo having switched back to the team channel. Jesse swears and takes off at a dead run towards the rest of the squad’s location.  

“Three, two, one—now!”

Jesse hears the cacophony of open fire even from here. His heart pounds rabbit fast in his chest, circulating the slurry of fear frozen blood through his veins. His imagination conjures up visons of his partner’s bullet perforated body, a nightmare stitched together from lived experience.

He runs faster.

Jesse sees a knot of Talon squaddies gathered around the mouth of an alley, and he doesn’t even think, he just lifts Peacekeeper and squeezes off six rounds. Six people crumple to the ground. Jesse ducks behind a car to reload, then pops back up.

But by then it’s started.

Unnatural light pours out of the alley, along with screams and the stench of burning meat. Jesse freezes in place, caught in that awful space between fight and flight. One enormous, blue maw noses out of the alley. A man is caught between uncountable rows of teeth, pulped by the force of the monster’s jaws. It tips its head toward him, and a black void opens up like a pupil in its eye. Then more open like ink filled sores, a few on the snout, some on the neck. Jesse is pinned in place by all of them, feeling seen in the worse possible way—prey caught in the gaze of a predator. The dragon stares him down for the space of a few seconds, then the corpse in its teeth drops to the pavement _through_ its jaw like it suddenly ceased to exist—and, shit, maybe it did—and the beast curls over itself and returns to the alley.

A breath Jesse didn’t realize he’d been holding hisses out between his teeth. He tries to holster Peacekeeper, but his hands are shaking so badly that it takes him a few tries. He fixates, for some fucking reason, on the body the dragon dropped. The way the flesh looks cooked, _overcooked_ even, and the way the plastic fasteners have all melted.

Then he remembers that Hanzo must be in that alley and he’s moving again.

In the space of handful of heartbeats Jesse prepares himself for the worst. The leading edge of grief dribbles battery acid behind his ribs as he relives a hundred variations of the same argument in the few steps to the mouth of the alley. Namely, just because Hanzo’s got the firepower of a god doesn’t mean he’s any less fragile than anybody else. But Hanzo wouldn’t take that truth to heart, no matter how Jesse railed, how he pleaded.

“Hanzo?” Jesse can’t keep a tight enough hold on himself to prevent his voice from shaking.

“Here.”

Jesse rounds the corner, and there he is. Standing tall at the back of the alley with his bow still in his hand. There are so many bodies. Most of the section must have died in here.

Hanzo stalks toward him, moving quickly through the carnage, and the whiplash of reality colliding with his bitter expectations freezes Jesse in place. Hanzo is alive. Smiling even, all angles and bared teeth, an expression that reminds Jesse more of the creature he’d just seen than any expression of joy.

The awful paradox Jesse tries to live with is this: Hanzo never seems to be living more than when he’s spitting in death’s face. He feels trapped in an agonizing cycle of watching Hanzo flirt with annihilation, survive, and go seek another thrill. Three weeks ago, it was a jump from a rooftop onto moving car. Two months before that, it was blowing the charges in a building he was still in, sure he was close enough to the exit.

Hanzo stops just inside Jesse’s space, staring up at him. Adrenaline has blown Hanzo’s pupils wide, and this close Jesse can see pinpricks of stellar fire glowing in their centers. Jesse’s eyes slide away from that impossibility to Hanzo’s split lip and the blood on his teeth. His right hand starts to shake, and he clenches it to keep it still.

Sirens start wailing, distant but surely headed this way. Hanzo hooks his bow over his shoulders and starts running, leading them on some path he must have spotted while higher up. Jesse doesn’t even think, his body just follows. Hanzo winds them away from the carnage, keeping out of view of the main thoroughfare as much as possible.

It doesn’t stop them from almost stumbling onto a police cruiser. Hanzo reacts before Jesse can even pinpoint the direction the sound is coming from, dragging him by the serape into an alley and past a dumpster. They both press back into the wall, standing so still they’re not even breathing, until the car passes them by.

Once it does, Hanzo starts laughing, sounding wild and half-manic. Jesse’s all too familiar with this particular laugh, almost hates it because it only comes at moments like these. He tips his head against the bricks and closes his eyes.

Once Hanzo stops, Jesse risks a look down at him. Hanzo is staring up at him like trouble incarnate. Without preamble, Hanzo surges into him. Catches Jesses low with one hand, on the hip below the body armor, and high, on the back of the neck, with the other. Pressed flush, Jesse can feel heat radiating off Hanzo like an overworked battery, unnaturally warm. The fingers on Jesse’s hip dig in deep, possessive, and tug them together. The hand at his neck hauls him down until his lips meet Hanzo’s. His mouth tastes like blood, and he smells like ionized air and gun smoke. Jesse misses his next breath, and whether it’s because of the way the smell turns his stomach or the way Hanzo’s tongue curls between his teeth he couldn’t say.

Hanzo shoves him back into the wall, practically vibrating, wound up with all that adrenaline and whatever it is that lives under his skin. There’s nothing and no one left to conquer, but there’s still so much potential energy stored up in him that has to go somewhere. Jesse is, not for the first time, the most fitting vessel.

When Jesse reaches to hold Hanzo he can feel the static discharge dance along his skin. His own hands roam, skipping lightly over shoulders and back and hips trying to find something that needs holding together. But Hanzo is, improbably, whole.

Hanzo presses even closer, forcing the body armor to dig the seams of Jesse’s shirt into his skin. Growls, low and long, into Jesse’s mouth. Notes that Hanzo shouldn’t be able to make set Jesse’s teeth buzzing in his skull. Hanzo is shimmering, the lights in his eyes even brighter, and Jesse worms his right hand between them, resting it over Hanzo’s heart. Its rhythm is slower than Jesse’s. Jesse splays his fingers out and loses himself counting the beats while Hanzo kisses him like he’s trying to win a war. Jesse’s relief hurts like a joint popped back into place. How close had he come to having to bury someone else?

Jesse shudders with that thought, the shadows of his pessimism sitting heavy at the edges of his mind. Hanzo might be good, and he’s sure as hell lucky enough, but that only goes so far when you insist in spitting in the face of death. It’s only a matter of time before—

Jesse spins, pins Hanzo against the building, hands on his shoulders. Realizes too late he’s trying to bottle lightning when his fingers tingle. Fine. Let it burn him. He just needs one goddamn moment where Hanzo is still and safe and _with him_. Jesse tips his head until his forehead is resting on Hanzo’s and closes his eyes. Tries to will the grim thoughts from his head.

He can’t.

The strange sensations stop, and Hanzo relaxes under him. His head moves, and lips meet his own, softer this time. Almost tentative. Jesse still tastes blood.

When Jesse can stand to open his eyes again, the otherworldly light glittering in Hanzo’s pupils is gone. There’s only the man himself, his features twisted in concern.

“Jesse?” he murmurs.

“I just—” Jesse has to stop to swallow. “You could’ve _died_.”

Jesse punctuates that by driving the titanium knuckles of his left hand into the brickwork. He has just enough sensation to know it gave. Probably, it rained a bit of grit onto Hanzo’s shoulder, but he doesn’t react to that. Hanzo just reaches up and cradles Jesse’s jaw.

“But I didn’t.”

Instead of replying, Jesse buries his face in Hanzo’s neck. Breathes deep of the awful stench of almost-death there and screws his eyes shut against the building burn. His lungs shake around a few ragged breaths, but then his self-control reasserts itself, because this is an active op and the rest of their team is out there and someone could still come along and put a slug in both their brain pans.

Jesse grits his teeth and pushes himself away. The concern lingers on Hanzo’s face, as does his hand on Jesse’s jaw, but Jesse steps out of reach, draws his weapon, and goes back to it.

 

* * *

  

The rest of the team made it out. The mission is a heavily qualified success.

Jesse doesn’t feel it.

Hanzo has been at his elbow for hours now, following from debrief to meal and now to his room. Jesse doesn’t know if he wants to pick a fight or just break down, and so instead he’s done nothing. Put up a façade of disaffected normalcy, locked his slow burning dread in a box, and tried to forget how close he’d come to being left behind again.

But he can’t quite make it work, because every time he catches sight of Hanzo in his peripheral vision, Hanzo’s looking at him like a particularly complicated problem. Like Jesse’s the one who’s behavior defies explanation.

Now that he finally can, Jesse simply wants to sleep, but that doesn’t come easy to a man like him, so he pulls the bottle of high proof rot gut out of his desk drawer. When he offers Hanzo a sip out of politeness, Hanzo snatches the bottle out of his hand.

“What are you thinking?” Hanzo’s tone is almost conversational, the operative word being _almost_.

“I’m thinkin’ I need to sleep,” Jesse snaps.

“No, I mean—” Hanzo gestures vaguely. “What have you been thinking? You’re worrying me.”

“I’m worryin’ _you_?” Jesse barks, incredulous. He laughs. He can’t help it. That’s so absurd. “Babe, you made me think I was gonna have to bury you not six hours ago.”

Hanzo sets the bottle aside and squares his shoulders.

“I knew what I was doing.”

“Yeah, you and a dozen others I’ve put to rest.” Jesse eyes the bottle, but Hanzo put it just a little out of his reach. Bastard. “You ain’t invincible, and you’re gonna kill me learnin’ that.”

Jesse can see him lining up a retort, but he hesitates before it can make it past his teeth. His shoulders slump and he sinks into the bed beside Jesse. He presses himself into Jesse’s side. They’ve both had time to shower, and now he only smells of soap. Even the split in his lip is barely visible. Most of the evidence of his goddamn death wish washed away.

“Everyone made it out. I’m still here.”

“And what about next time? Or the time after that? Hanzo, you can’t—”

Jesse can’t say it. Can’t say the words _die on me_.

Hanzo reach up and takes Jesse’s face in his hand. Jesse leans into the warmth of it without meaning to, follows as Hanzo guides him to meet his eyes. Jesse sees an entirely human kind of fire burning there.

“What then? What do I do?”

“Don’t do this crazy shit. Or, at least, don’t do it without me to back you up.”

Hanzo nods like it’s that simple. Then he leans in until they’re breathing the same air.

“I won’t go.” Hanzo whispers.

Jesse hears a different three words, and, somehow, finds a way to believe every one.


End file.
